This will follow Nathaniel Knautz's semester abroad in Seville, Spain, including text, pictures, and videos in both English and Spanish!

martes, 27 de enero de 2015

Mi casa es su casa

I figured,
now that I’ve been living here a couple weeks, y’all are on the edge of your
feet to hear about where I live, and what a Spanish home is like. In the city, like
in America, a lot of Spaniards live in apartments due to the dense population.
However, you’d be hard pressed to find a Señora’s house that’s not spotless!
Due to small space, they don’t accumulate a lot, so that probably makes it a
little bit easier. My home is on the northeast side of Seville, close to the Santa
Justa train station. We live on the sixth floor of a seven story building.
There are a couple elevators in the building, but they comfortably fit 2 people
in them, and I didn’t even realize it was an elevator, so my first day here, I
definitely climbed all six flights of stairs with my stuff!

When
approaching the front door, you can see that the door handle is in the middle
of the door. It’s more for show, really, because you don’t turn it to open the
door. The door locks automatically each time, so you have to use your keys to
get in each time. (There’s a key to get into the courtyard and building too,
which gets locked in the evenings.) There’s a small foyer when you enter, which
has doors to enter into the living room and a hallway. Down the hallway, there’s
a kitchen, bathroom, and three bedrooms.

The living
room has a couch and love seat with a tall coffee table, a dining table, tv,
birdcage, and a door into a storage room. The coffee table has a floor length
cover on it and a heater underneath. Since we’re in southern Spain and the
coldest it usually gets is low 40s, most houses don’t have heaters, so when it’s
cold, they turn the heater on and pull the cover up over their legs. It’s
actually extremely comfortable; it’s like sitting in a hot tub: your lower half
is very warm and your upper half is slightly chilly. The love seat easily slides over so everyone can enjoy the heat and see the tv. We also pull over chairs from the dining table and eat with our legs under the table in the heat. Chari, my Señora, likes to enjoy the heat and watch telenovelas (soap operas), las noticias (news), or películas (movies), which are often American movies that are dubbed with Spanish in place of English. (Personally, I don’t like that style because it drives me crazy that the lips don’t match up with the words!)

There’s also
a bird cage with three birds. The primarily gray one is male, the gray and
yellow one is female, and the yellow one is actually their daughter. I’m
guessing they’ll probably have another child down the road because they
practice making babies a few times a day… The daughter likes to chirp a lot,
and Chari says it’s because she’s lonely and needs a mate. I can understand, especially
since she watches her parents…

The storage
room isn’t anything special. Just a place to store extra possessions and our empty
luggage!

The kitchen
is petite and only has a fridge, sink, stove/oven, and microwave. The washer
for clothes is also in the kitchen, though it’s much smaller than American
washers. There isn’t a dryer; all clothes are dried on lines on the roof! The
kitchen is a Señora’s haven and that’s where the magic happens!

The bathroom
is also small, like everything here, and has enough room for a toilet,
tub/shower, sink, and bidet; I have no idea how that works though. Victor, our
Señora’s grandson, says he only uses theirs to wash his feet after he’s been to
the beach, etc. Seems like a waste of space to me…

Kevin Rawding
and I share a room. Many rooms don’t have built-in closets in them, so we have
a big armoire. Our twin beds are a little small for me; if I don’t sleep on my
side and bend my knees, my feet hang off the end. It works though.

Nick Kasle is
the other guy I live with. He’s got his own room (because he was the first one
to get here). It’s about the same size as our room, though he has a built-in
closet, desk, and small tv.

Chari’s room
is about the same size as ours too. Since she’s a widow, she just has a twin
sized bed for herself too. We don’t go in her room though.

Remember how
I mentioned that clothes are dried on the roof? Well, there’s a tall wall that
goes around the entirety of the roof. I asked Chari if there was a good view up
there of the city, and she told me there wasn’t really because you can’t see
over the wall. Well, I’m at least a foot taller than her and can see over it
easily! Indeed, there is a great view.

1 comentario:

I lived with a friend in a larger apartment about 6 blocks from school. We shared a bedroom but had our own bathroom. We were only welcome in the kitchen and bedroom though bc the Senor hated us. We were 2 married women who left our husbands and kids home. Senora had to make 2 breakfasts and 2 suppers bc he refused to eat with us. Or speak to us. We hung out in a little cafe around the corner studying and eating flan. It was summer, the cafe was air conditioned. The apartment was too but the unit near our bedroom never ran. We didn't complain or write a bad review bc Senora was good to us. There was a long waiting list for host parents bc it paid okay and since the Senora couldn't work outside the home this was her way of earning some money. She was good to us... As good as she was allowed to be. In spite of Senor, we had a wonderful experience!

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Datos personales

Nate started his undergraduate degrees in September of 2010, and completed his B.S. in Occupational Safety Management and B.S. in Spanish with a Business Administration Minor after studying abroad in Seville, Spain. While in college, he was an active member of the campus and local community, working for UW-Platteville's Women in EMS Program as a Student Assistant and Lead Student Assistant and Admissions and Enrollment Services as a Peer Advisor for New Student Registration, as well as a bartender for Champps Americana and server at Vinny Vannuchi's Italian Ristaurante. He was also very involved with his fraternity, Sigma Phi Epsilon, serving the chapter as Chaplain, VP of Member Development, and President, as well as the American Society of Safety Engineers, for which he was President 2 years. His favorite experience in life has been traveling by train throughout 21 European countries by himself.